How Beverage Innovation Can Boost Restaurant Sales

The numbers are in—a fifth of today’s consumers say that beverages play an important role in deciding which restaurants to visit. Whether imbibing in a local IPA with a date, toasting a milestone with champagne or celebrating a promotion with a vintage wine, the right drink can set the mood.

These days, more and more restaurant operators are offering customers extra reasons to say “bottoms up” by launching innovative and unique beverage menus that’ll get people in the door. According to Technomic’s Beverage Consumer Trend Report, two-fifths of consumers strongly agree that full-service restaurant concepts should offer greater and more unique beverage variety.

For fast-casual restaurants like Your Pie, this means offering customers the best—and widest—selection possible of the one beverage that pairs perfectly with pizza: beer.

Domestic beer giants like Budweiser and Miller have long been on-tap at pizzerias. But in the last few years, craft beer sales have taken off. In 2015, retail sales totaled $22.3 billion—up from $8.8 billion in 2010. Drew French, the founder of Your Pie, took notice of this rising trend, and since the beginning, he has been marrying craft pies with craft beers.

“It really took off, and we’ve established some great relationships with local breweries in all of the markets we serve. Now, we work to provide the best local craft beer in all of the new markets where we’re opening across the U.S. We like to offer a variety, so you can find you favorite national brands—but as part of our model of being a true community partner, we try to give our guests the very best of breweries owned and operated in the area,” French said. “Offering a variety of craft brews has really become the heart of the Your Pie experience.”

Your Pie keeps its beer menu fresh with the help of its Craft Pie Series. Every few months, the brand unveils a new and innovative pizza concoction, which is then paired with a featured local brewery. French believes that this constant innovation keeps customers coming back for more.

“Since we’re not a bar and customers are typically only having one or two beers to enjoy with their pizza, they’re more willing to spend $5 to $7 on something unique and interesting. We’re seeing customers coming back over and over each time we have a new selection on tap. They tell us they’re always curious to see how another local craft beer pairs with their favorite pie,” French said. “It also really ties the location to the community when you’re helping support local brewers. People take pride in that, and so do we.”

But beverage innovation isn’t just limited to craft beers. Just ask Dave Sobelman, who has garnered a cult following at his Milwaukee-based restaurant, Sobelman’s Pub & Grill, based on Bloody Mary’s alone. Because just about every restaurant out there offers up their own version of this savory brunch staple, Sobelman’s decided they would draw in customers by kicking it up a notch. First, they took a regular Bloody Mary and decided to garnish it with a slider, chilled shrimp, celery, bacon, sausage and various pickled vegetables. Then came The Chicken Fried Bloody Beast—a massive Bloody Mary garnished with an olive, onion, pickle, cheese, sausage, mushroom, scallion, shrimp, tomato, celery, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, lemon, two skewers of bacon-wrapped jalapeno cheeseballs and one whole fried chicken. The concoctions were crazy enough to work—the restaurant has seen an increase in sales ever since introducing their now-prolific Bloody Mary’s. The restaurant has gone viral, too, and was even featured by numerous outlets from obscure to mainstream, among them, Good Morning America.

“The smartest thing we ever did was put a cheeseburger slider in an already overloaded Sobelman’s Bloody Mary. This alone has gotten us international attention, and business is up 25 percent,” Sobelman said.